Can young people get colon cancer? If there is no family history and if the person is under 30, should they be concerned about getting colon cancer?
In general, it is very uncommon for young people to get colorectal cancer. There are, however, two well recognized hereditary syndromes in which cancer can develop in young people. The first is Familial Adenomatous Polyposis (FAP). This is a disease in which there is a mutation of a tumor suppressor gene and affected people develop hundreds to thousands of precancerous polyps in the colon. Unless the colon is removed, 100 percent of these patients will get colorectal cancer, usually by their late 30s. The disease is inherited directly from an affected parent (autosomal dominant inheritance), which means that each child has a 50 percent or one in two chance of inheriting the abnormal gene. If the gene is inherited, the child will eventually develop polyps. The average age for polyp development in this syndrome is the mid-teens, although children as young as eight or 10 sometimes have been found with polyps. If a family is known to have FAP, the affected parent and at-risk children may b
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